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2024-10-29 19:42:56He was waiting in the next room, near the bottom of the long staircase. They passed under an archway carved with demon skulls and saw the beast: an immense ogre, nearly twice Aldred's height and four times his bulk. A ridge of hair rose from his scaly scalp and was dyed, though not just one color, but alternating stripes of black and white. A spiked bracer with a fist shaped like a long terrible scythe covered his right arm. A huge spiked ball attached to a chain hung from his left hand, and it had the appearance of being able to demolish a castle wall.
The creature smiled, exposing sharp metal teeth. Behind him crouched a company of goblins with their glossy green skin, clutching metal shields emblazoned with the Skull emblem. Scabs, boils, and pockmarks marked their ugly faces, which smiled repulsively. Some wore spiked collars around their necks, others metal rings that pinched the skin of their torsos. They had red eyes devoid of pupils, and Elysia wondered if this was the sign of some dark god's corruption.
She looked around her, and to the right she saw crumbling stonework. It seemed that the ancient stonework of the dwarves had been torn down and pushed aside to make room for new, cruder excavations. Iron chains had been fastened to the wall near her, and to the left rose a huge fireplace, carved so that the hearth was the gaping jaws of a demonic head; on the stones there were stains of dried blood. “Have we ended up in a goblin temple?” Elysia wondered. “It's just what we needed: a man-hungry orc and a horde of fanatical goblins. Well” she consoled herself. "At least things can't get any worse."
She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to look up the stairs. Down it came another company of goblins, led by a stocky orc, clutching a scimitar in his left hand and carrying a banner in his right that bore a stylized representation of fanged maws, to the top of which was nailed an embalmed human head. Behind the standard bearer were more goblins armed with maces, spears, and axes.
Elysia looked at Jules, and the ranger shrugged. "What a terrible place to die." The cat girl thought. For a moment, the three groups exchanged glances, and there was a brief silence.
"For justice!" Aldred yelled, raising his great sword high and charging down the stairs with astonishing agility for a man covered in metal plates.
“Death to the goblin scum!” Frey bellowed as he followed. Overhead, the glittering gems seemed to grow brighter for an instant.
Elysia was on her guard, and alongside her, Jules braced himself for a fight. The standard bearer glared at them, but made no attempt to move any closer. Elysia was reluctant to attack the goblins upstairs, as they formed a difficult barrier to break.
Catgirl heard the clash of weapons from behind her, and the uproar of war cries, as the foul stench of the orc filled her nostrils. Iron-shod footsteps echoed on the stairs behind her, and she turned just in time to parry a mace blow delivered with considerable force by a greenskin warrior. The force of her impact jerked his arm.
She gritted her teeth and slashed, which she described in a flashing arc as she cut through the darkness. The goblin jumped back, and Elysia nearly lost her balance, but then she descended as quickly as the unsteady ladder would allow.
"Jules, defend the ladder!" she yelled her.
"I'll try."
Elysia continued after the goblin, though she found some trouble chasing her agile foe over the broken steps. The goblin stuck its tongue out at her and screeched derisively, filling the catgirl with fury and indignation, causing her to lunge forward and stumble. She fell to her knees and rolled as she felt pain from having scraped the skin from her kneecaps from hitting the stone. Something ran over her and she felt a scratch. "I have stumbled upon a nest of rats." She thought to herself. For a moment, she felt disoriented, but as she got to her feet she saw the tableau of battle before her.
Frey landed sword strikes into an enemy's chest, and the mail shirt burst outward where the huge weapon's blade struck. The paladin, arcing an ogre's shattering ball of spikes, slashed upwards into the stomach. Elysia watched as the tip of the weapon protruded from the ogre's back, and the goblins sped past him to attack Frey. Just out of fighting range, Johann Zauber produced a scroll and chanted an incantation. A ball of fire appeared in his left hand, and the light showed black rats swarming everywhere and made shadowy flapping wings swoop down in agitation.
Elysia struggled to keep her balance, and she shifted her gaze to Jules Gascoigne who was standing on the stairs, holding off several heavily armed enemies. He had already killed one, but more appeared behind another standard bearer.
Pain lacerated Elysia's body as a truncheon smashed into her shoulder; shimmering silver stars filled her field of vision, and as she fell forward, she dropped her sword. Above her stood a goblin, holding a raised club and wearing a triumphant smile on his face, along with an expression of dark lust. "Move, damn you." the catgirl told her aching limbs as she came crashing down on her like a felled tree trunk, moving painfully slowly to Elysia's panic-sharpened senses.
At the last instant, Elysia rolled to one side, the club hitting the rock with a loud crash. Catgirl contorted to kick the goblin, who flew off; she then groped desperately for the sword and was relieved when her fingers closed on the hilt.
She lunged forward and skewered the goblin before he could get to his feet; the creature cursed as it died, and suddenly a titanic flash blinded Elysia, and she staggered back, shielding her eyes as hell exploded before her. A hot breeze blew across her face, filling the air with the scent of sulfur. "I'm dead, dead and in hell." she thought she; but then her realization lit up her mind: Zauber had released the fireball.
She then looked around her and saw Frey and Aldred making their way through the demoralized goblins. Behind them, the ranger and the sorcerer rushed, and Jules caught him by the arm.
"Let's go!" she shrieked. “We have to get out of here while they are still confused.
They began to run down the long corridor, the din continuing behind them.
"What's going on back there?" she yelled her.
"There are different tribes of Goblins," Frey replied with a high-pitched laugh. “With any luck, they'll slit each other's throats as they fight over who's going to eat us. Perhaps you Elysia will be used to procreate.”
Elysia stared into the depths of the abyss, stars twinkling in its depths. Aldred and Frey watched the corridor behind them, Jules started across the corroded metal bridge, and the wizard, Zauber, leaned against a cast-iron gargoyle, panting heavily.
“I'm afraid I'm not cut out for life as an adventurer,” he snorted. “My studies did not prepare me for this strenuous exercise.”
Elysia smiled, for the sorcerer reminded her of her pampered mistress. The only conflicts they had been involved in were fights over the correct interpretation of the latest gossip.
Zauber was inspecting the gargoyle curiously, and the catgirl revised her earlier opinion of the mage, realizing that he was only apparently related to those ancient scholars she had seen roaming the empire. None of them would have survived the trek to the fortress city of the Five Peaks, and the fact that Zauber was such a skilled wizard spoke volumes about the man's determination and intelligence. Magic was not an art for someone cowardly or fearful, since it contained its own dangers. Curiosity gripped Elysia, and she suddenly wanted to ask the wizard how she had joined the paladin.
"I think we've lost the Goblins," Aldred yelled, as he and Frey lumbered toward the others.
The questions she had been about to ask Zauber died on her lips. As they crossed the bridge, he had the feeling that he wouldn't have another chance to ask them.
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They looked down the long dark corridor, which had no illumination from the gems. Felix had grown so used to the dim greenish glow that his sudden absence shocked him. It was as if the sun had set at noon. Gotrek started off into the darkness, apparently unaware of the lack of light, and the poet wondered if the dwarf could still see.“Better light the lanterns,” Frey commented as he shook his head. The light has been looted. Damn goblins…there should be gems lighting up the place, but they just couldn't leave them where they were.”Jules prepared a lantern, and Zauber lit it with a word, while Elysia watched them with a sense of uselessness. Suddenly, she heard Frey groaning behind her and turned to look.In the distance, at the end of the corridor, there was a figure that shone with a weak greenish light. It was an old bearded dwarf; light emanated from it and through it, and it seemed transparent, as tangible as a soap bubble. The gho
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“Take the sword!” Elysia yelled at him.But the stunned Frey was in no condition to heed the advice, and besides, he wanted to spill blood. He took an unsteady step toward Oleg, who was standing where he had left him, howling as he clutched his nose. Then, hearing Frey's staggering footsteps, she looked up and let out a tremendous bellow of anger and pain. He rushed toward his foe, crouching low and arms outstretched, intending to once again ensnare the dark hero in a deadly embrace. Frey remained where he was as the monster charged into a thunderous race towards him, as unstoppable as a runaway horse-drawn chariot.Elysia didn't want to look… The mutant was big enough to crush Frey, but she couldn't look away in horror.Oleg reached where Frey was. His massive arms began to close, but at the last second Frey ducked and dove between the monster's legs, then spun around and lashed out with the chain, which wrapped around the mutant's ankle. Fre
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"Ulber?" I ask. Ulber Roger?"Do not call me that way!" The man's voice approached the scream. "Address me as 'Sir'.""Do you know this idiot?" Frei asked.Elysia nodded. Ulber Roger was a philosophy friend of Elysia's owner before the catgirl had murdered her mistress and escaped from her. He had been a quiet young man, very studious and could always be found in libraries according to his mistress. He had probably never exchanged more than a dozen words with her in the two years he had been friends with her mistress. He also remembered that Roger had vanished. There was a bit of a scandal… something to do with some missing library books, and he also remembered that some Inquisitors had shown interest."Stop!" Roger yelled at him in his thin, irritating voice. "You are my prisoners and you will do as I command for the remainder of your wretched lives."“Will we do as you bid us for the rest of our worthless lives?” Elysia looked
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The desire to kill reverberated through Jasmine's brain, and the darkness rooted in her soul threatened to overtake her completely. Madness bubbled through her veins, and bloodlust flooded her as if she were a drug; her carnage gave him ecstatic pleasure. She wanted to find the black-armored warrior and kill him, for of all the enemies she had faced, he was the most powerful: a worthy offering indeed to the god of Wrath. At the last second, when she was about to brush aside his sword and kill him, her fate, in the form of her own idiotic followers of hers, had intervened to separate them. She wanted to find him again and finish the fight.And then she saw the girl. As if against her will, she gazed at the frightened little face that peeked out from where she was hiding. He knew what he had to do, because it was time to end this once and for all, to take the first step on the path that would end in eternal life, to take advantage of the opportunity offered to him of a glorious
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Jasmine watched as the great cannon blasted the third breach in the city wall, then decided enough was enough. They had to save powder for the next fortification they came to, and the gaps were big enough for their soldiers to squeeze through. The defenders were tired and bewildered, so the time had come. She signaled to the bugler, and he sounded the advance blast. Marching to the beat of the human-skinned drums, the beastmen sprang into motion.Jasmine felt the thirst for blood rise within her, and with it, her desire to offer souls to the god of Wrath. She that night she would make him a great offering.♦ ♦ ♦Elysia watched as the tide of beastmen surged across the grounds, and archers began firing from the ramparts. They chose their targets calmly, methodically, and efficiently, and fired. Arrows pierced the darkness, piercing chests, throats, and bestial eyes. As the infernal drums beat, the relentless bloodthirsty beastmen continued to adva
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Elysia watched the clouds overhead, racing across the sky like a mass that twisted and undulated in a strong wind. The color of the forest had changed from a light green to a darker, more ominous hue; she seemed as if the trees, like everything else, were waiting.She was standing on the parapet at the top of the wooden wall, and she was looking across the fields, straining to catch any sign of movement in the undergrowth. By her calculations, it was the end of the afternoon. Next to her was Frey, who was looking at his sword with disinterest. Every ten paces along the wall there was an archer, one of the woodcutters, men who could hit an ox's eye from two hundred paces, and measuring the distance between them and the line of trees, Elysia realized. realized that this was a slaughterhouse. Any attackers would get bogged down in the plowed fields and be easy targets for archers.She tried to let that thought reassure her, but she couldn't. Night in the woods was not lik
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Elysia looked up at the ornate golden hammer that gleamed in the early morning light streaming through the open door of the temple. The runes etched into the Hammer's head reminded him of the ones adorning the blade of her own sword, but that didn't surprise him too much. Her sword had been the most prized possession of an Order of paladins and it seemed only fitting that the sword be engraved with holy signs.There were few people present; only some old women who were sitting cross-legged on the floor and praying. The babies with their mothers were outside, getting the cool while they could, and Elysia guessed the air might be unbreathable in there with the doors closed.The temple was a simple sanctuary with a simple altar, except for the presence of the Hammer, which was used to bless marriages and contracts. The Father, The Mother and The Son were not very popular deities there, since most of the woodcutters looked to Belial, Lord of the Forests and God of the Eart
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Kat hurried toward the base of the watchtower because she felt the need to be alone. She had grown tired of sitting by the large central bonfire, and not even Frey's presence reassured her. She felt very alone in the midst of all those busy adults; in reality, there was no one with whom she could talk, and for the first time she realized that she no longer knew anyone in this world and that she had no place in it. Her flames reminded him too much of the Kleinsdorf fires. The ladder barely creaked under her bare feet as she climbed toward the trapdoor with the agility of a monkey.Elysia was sitting alone, and she was looking into the darkness. She had long since set the sun like a bloodstain on the horizon; the moon had risen through the sky, its silvery light bathing the surroundings. A gentle breeze cooled Kat's cheeks and made the forest whisper and murmur ominously. Elysia watched him mesmerized, lost in her own thoughts, and she hurried across the tower and sat down besi
